Monthly Archives: June 2016

Whether you’re in the printing business or another manufacturing industry altogether, having an online glossary is valuable.

For site visitors who are new to your industry, a glossary’s educational. If they see unfamiliar terms used elsewhere on your site – or on the web – they can access your glossary. And not for nothin’, if your site’s sprinkled with industry terminology that’s not commonly known, you need a glossary.

The hardest part is building one from scratch. But don’t let a little work stop you. This would be an ideal project for a summer intern. Going forward, you simply have to add new terms as needed.

Once you have a glossary, consider the opportunities to turn it into good content and have it point back to your site:

Share a “term-a-week” on your social channels.

Stage contests using obscure terminology in your social channels.

Engage your online community in building your glossary. Add an online form for this; gather names and emails.

If you’re doing educational videos, feature some of the terms now and again. Think how helpful mini-videos explaining “web-to-print,” “large format,” or “omnichannel campaigns” could be.

Group a few terms together for a blog or enewsletter (binding terms, ink terms, paper terms).

And what can be done in a blog or enewsletter can be done in a direct mail campaign to promote your company.

Bottom line? If you have a glossary, what’s it doing for you? It doesn’t need to just sit there. A good industry glossary is a bottomless well of content to be used in all sorts of ways.

I admire visual artists and always have. My own talent for creating any sort of art form doesn’t exist; it’s that simple. Words are my thing.

Last Sunday I was perusing the NYT Style Magazine and came across a standing feature that always blows me away – The Illustrated Interview. Every interviewee for this particular feature draws his or her own pictures to answer a few questions.In the current issue, the artist interviewed is a young pop singer (is this redundant?) named Grimes. She drew her illustrations using a Wacom Cintiq tablet.

As far as interviews go, this unique interpretation is visually very engaging. It makes you linger over every drawing. (Maybe that’s just my envy talking.)

This is such a clever idea.

I would never have looked at this interview had it not been for the visuals. May it inspire all of us to use interesting visuals in our content whenever we can, even if we don’t create them ourselves. Use images anywhere they might catapult your content to a higher level of engagement.

QR codes are basically ugly. I tend to ignore most of them. Aside from being unattractive, they’re disruptive. They require you to launch a smartphone app (assuming you’ve downloaded one), scan the code, and then wait, staring at your phone, to discover what’s behind it.

Last week I got a postcard for a local design studio that included a QR code. I scanned it just to see where I landed. I landed nowhere. After several minutes of looking at “Loading….” I went on about my business. Who knows where that code led? I’m betting it just leads to their home page. Would I recommend that firm? Hell to the no.

My problem with QR codes, aside from them being eyesores, is that too few marketers tell us why we should bother to act on them. You need to motivate someone to pull out a phone, launch an app and scan a code.

Usually I see them on marketing collateral, though they can show up anywhere, including T-shirts, cakes, floor graphics, store signage, and so on. They’re wasted in places that can’t be scanned. I saw a ginormous QR code on a banner in an airport once. It was impossible to scan with a smartphone.

If you’re planning on using a QR code, please remember these 2 things:

Always make it worth someone’s time to scan your code. Tell me why I should bother. Let it launch something fantastic. Show me something special.

Always include some short instructions. Not everybody knows what to do when they see a QR code.

The business of buying commercial printing for one’s company is going to change forever. Two factors are driving this change: Baby Boomers on the verge of retirement, and explosive growth of newer media.

When Baby Boomers retire, they take with them decades of print production knowledge and experience. Businesspeople entering the workforce will have significantly less print knowledge and a smaller pool of savvy peers and managers from whom to acquire it. With fewer on-the-job mentors, where and how will businesspeople develop their print sourcing skills? I have my own hunches, which I’ll save for another post.

Tomorrow’s print customers will need to be skilled in more than just print manufacturing. They’ll need an appreciation of multiple channels and a solid understanding of how these channels are best integrated for effective campaigns.

These changes are well under way. They’re altering the career paths of businesspeople who have a passion and a talent for print production, and they’re affecting how print companies develop new business.

Boomers will be exiting the workforce sometime within the next 10 years or so, and digital marketing channels are here to stay.

Are you seeing these changes in your marketplace? If so, how are you dealing with them?